you trained me (not) to love
by andawaywego
Summary: "The first place they live together is a brownstone in the Upper East side that Quinn, honestly, isn't sure how they afford." Quinn, Rachel, and another bathroom. Faberry. Post-season six.


**A/N:** written for Faberry week – bathroom.

set post-season six.

…

 _you trained me (not) to love_

..

The first place they live together is a brownstone in the Upper East side that Quinn, honestly, isn't sure how they afford.

Rachel, with two Tony's and about four shows under her belt—including her latest one— seems to know, though, and she says, "I bought it because I'm the breadwinner," in a manly voice that turns into a high-pitched squeal when Quinn picks her up and carries her over the threshold.

They're not married, but they are engaged, which is more than enough because they're taking it slow after Rachel's first lap around married life ended in a messy divorce.

It's more than enough when Quinn watches the evening sun stream in through the window of their living room, bouncing off Rachel's engagement ring as her left hand grips the edge of a box labeled _Books and Things 1_.

"This place is amazing," Rachel says when they're making dinner, sliding across the kitchen on her socks.

"You just like it because it has floorboards you can do _that_ on." Quinn points to her feet with the spoon she's using to stir their soup.

Rachel, indignant, says, "So what if I do?" and she kisses Quinn in the steam that wafts up from the pot on the stove.

The room by the master bedroom has built-in bookshelves and it's almost as if they can hear the future echoes of a child's laughter.

"This would be a great nursery," Rachel says when they pass by on their way to bed and Quinn nods, wraps an arm around her.

"It will be," she returns, because maybe they'll both be ready to have kids soon—ones that they won't have to give away this time.

Kurt and Blaine seem to agree with her first observation when they visit the next day, though their son—at nearly three-years-old—seems far more interested in the empty boxes lying around.

"He likes to hide," Kurt says, trying to sound aggravated, but only sounding affectionate.

"I remember," Rachel comments, making the others give her a strange look that she shrugs off. "He didn't want to come out of me, that's for sure."

They laugh and the Anderson-Hummels stay just long enough after dinner to complain that Quinn and Rachel's cable hasn't been set up yet.

Santana and Brittany are jealous of the bedroom sizes and Brittany says, "We're gonna move in. Just…in the dead of the night. You won't even notice until you wake up and we're making breakfast."

"I'm not living with these two," Santana protests. "I've heard enough of their very loud lady loving through too many walls already. No thanks."

This makes Rachel blush and grip Quinn's hand until they leave a little while later.

The only flaw the place seems to have is the linoleum and wallpaper in their en suite.

"It's like a horror movie," Quinn says, looking at the cartoon children by a well, walking through the trees, and standing by a cow on the wallpaper.

Rachel, brushing her teeth, agrees with a grunt. "We should renovate it."

Quinn stops flossing and looks at her fiancée the mirror. "Yeah, okay."

The problem with that, though, is that, after the outrageous price of the place, all the work has to be done by them, which usually ends up just being Quinn because of how busy Rachel is with her new show.

Because it's summer and school is out, Quinn doesn't have any English classes to teach and has more time to look up how to use a floor scraper, a circular saw.

Rachel sometimes stands in the door, offering to help when she's home, but Quinn just tells her that it's crowded enough with just her in there.

"I'm not even sure what you would have room to do," she says, and Rachel accepts it eventually and disappears into the house, somewhere close but far.

It takes about three weeks total and all that time begins to take a toll on Quinn—all those hours spent looking at tiles and the sink and the mirror to the sound of trickling water from the shower, the toilet.

Apparently, she'd forgotten—sometime over the past two years, between rediscovery and falling in love all over again—that bathrooms are not a new or foreign concept.

For her and Rachel, they've always been haunted.

It _is_ almost like a horror movie, with the ghosts of stolen moments, chances that have been murdered in cold blood instead of taken into warm, open hands, peering over her shoulder as she pries up the dirty, yellow linoleum.

They breathe against her neck asking, _Did you forget?_

And she had.

She'd forgotten that it was in a bathroom that she'd first realized she was in love with Rachel—after the force of her slap stung her palm like a paper cut you don't notice until it hurts.

It was in a bathroom that Rachel said those words— _"Finn, asked me to marry him_."—and Quinn had nearly sobbed around, _"You…can't_ ,"; that Quinn handed Rachel her heart disguised as train tickets and Rachel had taken them with a hug and an empty promise.

It was in a bathroom after they'd gone to dinner to celebrate Rachel's engagement years later that Quinn had said, "I'm in love with you," and been answered with silence and a sick-looking Rachel. And then, similarly, at Rachel's wedding reception, they'd run into each other by the sinks in the small hotel lobby ladies' room and Quinn had told her that it didn't change anything—she would wait—and Rachel had cried and let her brush her lips over her cheek on her way out.

It had been easy to forget because things got bettter.

Rachel had moved into a cramped apartment in Quinn's complex after leaving Jesse just three-and-a-half-months into being his wife and kissed Quinn in the middle of folding laundry once the divorce was finalized—they'd ended up just making the piles of their clean clothes dirty again.

Quinn has woken up to Rachel in her bed for nearly two years now, messy and spread out with all of the covers on her side of the bed, bunched around her waist.

Rachel had cried and said, "Yes," before Quinn had even gotten the chance to ask, "Will you marry me?" on the night she'd proposed in her living room and she'd been forced to cut her planned speech short because Rachel was trying to shove the ring onto her finger already.

But those things don't just make memories disappear—don't make them fade away.

Ghosts still linger in the form of wasted years.

They just, apparently, stay contained in the bathroom.

When Rachel comes home one night a month after they move in, she finds Quinn wilted on the edge of the tub, crying into her shaky, caulk-covered hands.

She brings Quinn's mouth to hers, kneeling in front of her on the dirty subfloor, and kisses her, saying, "Baby, what's wrong?"

And Quinn isn't sure how to say it, but she must find a way because Rachel says, "Oh, honey, no. No," as she pulls her up and leads her from the bathroom.

In the kitchen, as Rachel washes Quinn's hands, Quinn says, "I'm sorry. You probably think I'm being dumb."

The faucet turns off and a dish towel is placed in her hands so that she can dry off. "No," Rachel whispers. "I don't think you're being dumb."

She's known for years now how Quinn used to feel—how she _still_ feels, but that it was different in high school, in college and after when Rachel hadn't known. It's been a topic so often stepped around that now she's not sure how to discuss it.

Quinn, with dry hands, tries to make the mood lighter by smiling and saying, "What a heartbreaker you turned out to be, Rachel Berry."

Rachel returns her smile and then wraps her arms around Quinn's neck, gets closer. "I never meant to break your heart."

They're talking in low voices, as teasing and carefree as it sounds. Maybe because they're afraid of stirring up the past, their history, forcing them back to that time before they were _RachelandQuinn_ and weren't even really a "they".

It could be, also, that they're scared of realizing that it was just what they were used to—the heartache, the years of hidden glances and deeper meanings. That was just how things _were_ for so long that now they're not even sure they're allowed to enjoy this.

But that's ridiculous.

Quinn says, "I know."

Rachel calls in for her understudy to take over for the next day's matinee and they finish the bathroom together that night, forgoing sleep to do it.

The sun is coming already coming up when they're finished and their heads are filled with dense, cloudy exhaustion as they look over their work approvingly.

"It looks good," Rachel says and her arm finds Quinn's waist.

"It does," Quinn returns and smiles when she feels Rachel kiss her shoulder through her t-shirt.

"We never christened the house, you know," Rachel whispers throatily.

Quinn laughs. "Yes, we did. More than once."

And they had—all three bedrooms, the kitchen, the living room.

She can feel Rachel's smile spread through her sleeve.

"Well, not this particular room," Rachel points out and Quinn turns to look at her in the early morning light, in that familiar harsh, bathroom glow.

"You're not too tired?" she asks and Rachel slips a hand between the skin of Quinn's hip and the waist of her athletic shorts.

"Never," is her answer.

Later, they'll bring back in their crate labeled _Our Bathroom Stuff_ and they'll unpack it together.

For now, though, Quinn kisses Rachel with reverent hands on her waist because, if the ghosts of the people they used to be insist on sticking around, the least she can do is give them a show.

…

 **references:**

title from the Strokes song "Meet Me in the Bathroom."


End file.
